Abstract
Upper respiratory tract infections (URTI) are the most common infectious illness in the general population. It accounts for 20-36% of outpatient clinic visits. Furthermore, 40-60% of URTI are caused by viruses, so in most of the cases there is no need to use antibiotics and treatment is mainly symptomatic and supportive. The non-judicious use of antibiotics has resulted in unwanted resistant strains of bacteria, a recognized etiology which led to that, among other things, is the misuse of antibiotics in treating URTI. In our study we assessed the rates of non-judicious use of antibiotics. Moreover, we will determine the most commonly prescribed antibiotics and we want to decrease the rates of misuse by sharing the results to ministry of health. Methods: A retrospective study that had been conducted after bioethical approval was taken in Albadaya city primary health care centers from 4th of March to 8th of March 2018 to which includes all patients who presented with sore throat. We excluded patients aged 3 years and below and patients with concomitant disease that needs antibiotic therapy. In addition our study had been based on Centor criteria which are a validated tool. The analysis was performed using (SPSS) version 21. Both descriptive and analytic inferential statistics had been conducted. P-value of <= 0.05 had been accepted as significance level for all statistical tests. Results: There were 392 patients who were involved in this study. Age range of the patients was from 4 to 70 years old. Most of the patients received both antibiotic and non-antibiotic drugs at the same time with 82.1%, 10.2% with non-antibiotic only, 6.6% with antibiotic only, 2 cases received two antibiotics and another 2 cases received two type of antibiotics plus nonantibiotic drug. Regarding risk of streptococcal infection score to determine the issuance of medication, 47.2% were in the group of 5% -10% score, 26.3% were in the group of 1% -2.5% score, 23.2% were in the group of 11% -17% score and 03.3% were in the group of 28% -35% score. Overall, the most common prescribed antibiotic was amoxicillin (39.1%) while the most common prescribed medication was paracetamol (46.2%). Conclusion: This study finds paracetamol and amoxicillin are the most common prescribed drugs on URTI patients and based on our further investigation the prevalence of non-judicious antibiotics issuance was relatively higher at 89.2% while 10.2% was considered as appropriate issuance of medication. This indicates the need to address the increasing of incorrect prescription of drugs.